


It's always the sweet ones that stab you in the back

by Legs (InsanityRule)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 05:43:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5485751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsanityRule/pseuds/Legs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gavin is more than prepared (and willing) to help (take back his CIO position) Nelson when he finds out being CIO isn't easy, but Nelson has other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's always the sweet ones that stab you in the back

Gavin isn’t the  _ first  _ to congratulate Nelson on his promotion to CIO, but he will be damned if he isn’t the most charming when he does. He bought one of those ridiculous sodas and practiced his simple congrats in the bathroom for about five minutes before he was satisfied with a combination of humble and appreciative that his position isn’t being occupied by an idiot, even if the thinks the opposite.

 

When he gets to the office and knocks, a strange feeling that derails him for longer than he’d care to admit, he’s told to  _ wait  _ because Mr. Bighetti is reorganizing his space into a more thought-provoking layout. Gavin imagines that means he’s adding a mattress, or at the very least a series of bean bag chairs and other comfortable places for him to nap.

 

It’s rather confusing when he finally is let inside the office that not even twenty-four hours ago was his and finds a tasteful desk with more drawers than his old one, but still very nice and earthy looking, several modern chairs in a small semicircle with a permanent projector screen on the wall, a couple abstract art pieces where his magazine covers used to be, and Nelson in a sweater and collared shirt, reading over some paperwork.

 

This is not at all what he expected.

 

Hooli XYZ was always a few steps shy of being a complete disaster. Whenever Gavin checked on their ‘progress’ there was always at least ten different half eaten food items strewn around, some sort of disaster experiment in progress, and Nelson blissfully unaware and smiling as he led the team in accomplishing absolutely nothing.

 

This is the office he expects of a proper up and coming CIO, maybe even a younger version of himself, but definitely not Nelson Bighetti.

 

“Oh, hey Gavin, have a seat?” He offers the chair opposite the desk, and Gavin is stunned enough by the disconnect in his mind between Nelson and what he’s seeing to comply without comment. “I’m just reading over the new contracts legal sent over. No tricky wording this time.”

 

“Right,” Gavin shakes off the confusion. Legal probably did all the work anyway; he’s almost certain this is an act to make it look like he’s busy. “I just wanted to congratulate you on your new position. A young man-”

 

“Was that everything?” Gavin croaks out a rather embarrassing sound in surprise, “not that I’m not appreciative, but I have a lot to get done before the transfer is completed. Did you get your new HR briefing about Nucleus? All yours, just get me reports every Friday, let’s say around three, on the team’s progress. Sound good?”

 

Gavin nods, “sounds fair.” He’s still reeling a bit, but he collects himself enough to be able to shake Nelson’s hand before leaving to meditate in the on-campus studio for an hour.

 

Obviously Nelson being a competent, exemplary employee was because of Gavin’s tireless efforts to illustrate his worth, but that’s all it was. Nelson’s promotions were puff pieces, a fucking  _ farce  _ to try and divert blame, and it didn’t  _ work.  _ But the end result should be a confused, clueless Nelson begging him for assistance, or to just keep running Hooli in the background, not this competent, alien Nelson currently sitting in the CIO office.

 

He read the fucking  _ employee contract,  _ a document that was already at least ten pages long  _ before  _ changes had to be made. Nelson didn’t even read  _ memos  _ and those were usually half a page at most. It has to be a ruse.

 

On the first Friday after Nelson’s promotion, at three o'clock sharp, Gavin is sitting across from Nelson and reporting the progress of Nucleus.

 

“We’ve identified the bottlenecks and reallocated personnel to focus on those areas, and as of this morning a few of the minor bugs have been addressed. The memo I sent you details these areas.”

 

“I read that, thank you. Sounds like things are looking up for everybody.”

 

“Are you settled in? It’s a big change from your, ah,  _ previous  _ job description. It’s understandable if there are a few hiccups in the process while you get acquainted with everything.”

 

“Nope, no hiccups. Looking good on my end.” Nelson diverts his attention to his computer. “Sorry, I need to answer these.”

 

“No problem.”

 

Gavin settles back, ready to help when the inevitable breakdown happens and Nelson can’t make sense of the questions he’s getting from various departments. But after five minutes Nelson is still ticking away at his keyboard and his face hasn’t even changed from it’s calm neutral position, discounting the small grin. Gavin’s not sure what to make of any of this.

 

“Okay,” Nelson sits back in his chair, and he looks so damn  _ comfortable,  _ like this is where he belongs, “unless you have any concerns about maybe needing more team members or other issues, I think we’re on the right track. I have a meeting with XYZ in about, ten minutes, so unfortunately I’ll have to keep these meetings short. Just send an email if you need anything.”

 

_ Who the fuck are you?  _ “Thank you, I will.”

 

=

 

Three weeks in  _ nothing has gone wrong.  _ Gavin’s beside himself; he can’t figure out  _ how  _ this is the same bright eyed lazy kid he promoted only a few months ago.

 

Nelson’s in the middle of discussing an upcoming conference for Nucleus to try and reveal the improvements when Gavin just can’t hold in his question anymore. He blurts out, “who the  _ fuck  _ are you?”

 

Nelson stops, leans over to his phone, and hits the pager. “Patrice, I’m going to have to cancel my meeting with XYZ today. Can you let the project manager know and I’ll get in contact to reschedule.”

 

The absolutely smug look on his face as Patrice answers, “yes Mr. Bighetti” and the small flourich Nelson adds when lifts his finger off the button and sits back in his chair just about kills Gavin right where he sits. This is  _ not  _ an expression he ever expected to see on Nelson’s face.

 

“I was wondering when we’d have this conversation. Honestly thought it would happen sooner.”

 

“What the  _ fuck  _ are you talking about?”

 

“It’s easy to understand, but I’ll put it simply so there’s no confusion; I’m just way smarter than you thought.”

 

Gavin can’t quite wrap his mind around the concept. “Am I being  _ punked _ ?”

 

“Ha, no no,” Nelson stands up and stretches, “no, I ah, okay so the simplest explanation is I guess yeah, you were sort of punked. Fooled. Whatever you want to call it.” Nelson grabs a can of soda out of the mini fridge in the corner and pops it open. “I guess you could say you underestimated me.”

 

“ _ I  _ promoted you.  _ I  _ was the one that gave you a fucking  _ job  _ here just because you know Richard!”

 

Nelson makes a buzzer noise and takes a drink, “who do you think told Aly Richard and I are best friends? When Richard was interviewing everyone in the incubator and I was getting cut, sure, I was hurt, but while I was biking around I got an idea. Pied Piper is peanuts compared to Hooli, we both know that.”

 

He started walking around, “and I knew Jared was defecting to Pied Piper, left an anonymous message on your phone,” he taps the phone and Gavin scowls at it, “about Jared, and dropped a hint in the break room while Justin and Aly were in there about me being best bros with Richard. And you guys did the rest. Boom, VP of Spite became my unofficial title, and I was secured in my place at Hooli.”

 

Gavin shakes his head. “Just a minute, you were  _ unassigned.  _ Essentially banished.”

 

“I think you mean, got an opportunity to meet my future team,  _ and  _ do some background research. Removing me from the reverse engineering team was important so I could work on things, and I needed more time. Without Richard or my help to push things in the right direction, Nucleus was failing.” Gavin refuses to agree that his project went so far as to  _ fail  _ but it didn’t exactly succeed either. “You would be desperate, need a scapegoat, and who better than the best friend? The guy that ‘helped build Pied Piper’.”

 

“ _ Legal,  _ provided that idea.” He’s gotten better at placing blame in its proper place, he’s not taking the fall for that plan. “They said to build you up, to make you this… this wunderkind.”

 

Nelson nearly spits out his soda, “where do you think they  _ got  _ the idea in the first place? I told them I used to work with Richard on projects, that he bounced ideas off me. That we talk  _ all the time. _ They did the rest and passed it onto you. I actually got the idea from the news, and I thought, ‘is Gavin this desperate?’ and at first I thought no, but then I mean, we all saw the reveal.”

 

“And I knew about the contract.” Gavin opens his mouth to reply, or yell, but he’s not sure what he’s going to say and Nelson continues. “I knew if a judge read it they’d throw them out.”

 

“The trial was  _ months  _ away.”

 

“And then it wasn’t, because you agreed to an arbitration.”

 

Gavin shakes his head. All this deceit is making him feel a bit uncomfortable (He will not admit to being hot and bothered by this display. It’s already humiliating enough.) and he tries to level his breathing.. “We weren’t moving to arbitration until Richard got ahold of that damn phone. I suppose  _ you  _ gave that to him?”

 

“Not me, definitely not, because that’s illegal. But, if Aly were to forget his phone at a bar and, being the humble good natured guy that I am, intended to return it in the morning, but Richard took it from my bag before I could, now there’s nothing that could be done about that now is there?”

 

Gavin squirms in his seat. He’s never seen Nelson be so confident and downright underhanded. He’s on par with the rest of the assholes frontrunning Silicon Valley.

 

“So, you  _ helped  _ Pied Piper win?”

 

“I helped Pied Piper speed things along.” Nelson sits back down and leans back in his chair, smug and irritating and positively devious. “No offense to Richard, he’s my friend, but them winning wasn’t all that important as long as the contracts got viewed. If that didn’t work, I was going to send one anonymously. Tie it into some complaint maybe, beef up the HR angle. The details aren’t really important.”

 

“You put the company at risk-”

 

“I put  _ you  _ at risk, and you’re too vital to Hooli to actually get rid of you, but making you report to someone else makes the board happy because you can’t go on another vindictive hunt against a tiny startup and Nucleus gets the full attention it needs, and Nelson, modest idea man of Hooli XYZ and all around understated tech genius becomes the new CIO.”

 

Gavin steeples his fingers and takes a deep breath. And another. Quietly, he adds, “you’ve been planning this for  _ months. _ ”

 

“I am an idea man.”

 

“You pitched that moonshot idea, the… the damn headset-”

 

“Oh, that’s actually what I’m working on right now. See, XYZ is still my idea hub, and we have the means to fast track that idea, since Bannercheck did all the hard work of getting that technology up and running. You just ignored it because it helped a monkey masturbate.”

 

Gavin refuses to believe that he ignored a job saving idea like that, but when he tries to remember all he can see is that damn monkey.

 

“You were after my job this whole time.”

 

“I would’ve been content with the XYZ position, honestly. But now that I’m here, it’s not half bad.” Nelson stands and walks around the desk, standing so he’s leaning against it right in front of Gavin. “Who knows? Maybe when you turn Nucleus around, and things settle, we can try out the two hat system. Hooli didn’t get to be the way it is because you were flailing around.”

 

“You’d just ignore the board’s decision to remove me?” It’s his company, regardless of what nelson is offering, he’s not going to stop until he is CIO again. But he’s already been fooled by Nelson once, and this is definitely an offer that falls under the category ‘too good to be true’. “What the fuck does that get you?”

 

“I’m the CIO. It’s kind of my call in the end. And, what better motivator is there for Gavin Belson to succeed than letting him return to his old job, with only a few strings attached.”

 

This is the most manipulative, underhanded, Goddamned  _ hot  _ thing Gavin’s ever heard. “The laziness, the cluelessness, it was all an act?”

 

“Pretty easy one too.”

 

Gavin is  _ furious  _ but he is also  _ so fucking turned on  _ by this display of influence and power. 

 

“Do you wanna know the best part?” He’d also love to pin Nelson to that desk but he keeps himself in check. Gavin nods. “No one will believe that I told you any of this, because everyone knows Nelson as the sweet, friendly, modest guy you pitched to them.” Gavin stands and gets up in Nelson’s face, but despite the fact that he’s nearly six inches taller than him, Nelson is still smirking. “I’m not the one that got you removed as CIO. _You_ are.”

 

“ _ I am _ ?” Gavin places both his hands on either side of Nelson’s hips. Nelson is  _ grinning ear to fucking ear. _

 

“That’s right.”

 

He’s angry, no,  _ irate,  _ and Nelson’s sitting there, smug, confident, on top of the world because he bested Gavin Belson at his own game.  _ And he let it happen.  _ Hell, he provided all the puzzle pieces to make things fall into place. He’s not going to admit that; it’s something he’ll carry to his grave, but by the looks of things, Nelson’s fully aware that Gavin’s agreeing with him.

 

And he can’t do anything because Hooli is running  _ perfectly.  _ Nelson is as competent as he is deceitful.

 

And in what, six months? Less? He’ll have Nucleus perfected as well.

 

“The two hat system. You’re not just bluffing.”

 

“I’ll even get it to you in  _ writing. _ Being CIO is cutting into my XYZ time, and if I’m going to bust out some new innovations by the next demonstration I need to be down there working, not reading stupid memos from HR.”

 

Of course it benefits Nelson; Gavin feels like he should be surprised, but he’s just very turned on, and he’s going to be CIO (Co-CIO, but it’s something and his company is in good, albeit sneaky, hands in the meantime.),  _ and  _ Nelson’s pupils are dilated so far he can barely see any brown. He licks his lips, and Nelson  _ stares. _

 

The speed in which Nelson reciprocates after Gavin pulls him into a forceful kiss makes Gavin briefly consider if this was one of Nelson’s ulterior motives. Gavin already has Nelson seated on his desk and settles with standing between his legs (He’ll claim it was hotter that way but in reality the height difference was hurting his neck.) and it takes not one, but  _ two  _ frantic sets of knocking on the office door for them to pull away and imply that, yes, they were just finishing up a meeting, and sure, they can look at the problem in quality.

 

Gavin watches Nelson fall into the friendly, smiling young man he’s presented himself as for months, and after the head of quality is gone, fall back into the snarky deviant with one comment. “You’d think this job would be more than glorified babysitting but it’s really not.”

 

“You get used to it,” he sighs. Friendly Nelson is endearing and sweet, but this masterminding Nelson is  _ exciting  _ and  _ challenging.  _ And he has the perfect mindset to make Hooli better, by any means necessary.

 


End file.
